WATER SPRINGS / VODA ZVIRA

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WATER SPRINGS / VODA ZVIRA

The composer Josip Slavenski (1896-1955) spent thirty of his most fruitful years in Belgrade. He was born in Čakovec (Croatia) as Josip Štolcer, but he changed his last name in accordance with the Pan-Slavic ideas of the time, in order to compose his most important pieces and incorporate his creativity, charisma and energy into the music life of the capital of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia at first, and, later on, of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Zenitism was an avant-garde leftist movement established in Zagreb in 1921, whose actions and provocations were primarily expressed through the “ZENIT” magazine, shut down in 1926. At the heart of its activities was the rebirth of art under the influence of “Barbarogenial creator” from the Balkans as the vital element in contrast to the weary West. Having left Zagreb, like Slavenski, the founders of the magazine, Ljubomir Micić and Branko Ve Poljanski, were active in Paris and Belgrade where they left stimulating traces and a few successors.

Although relatively few pieces of information about the Zenit magazine survived, it cannot be disputed that Slavenski and the Zenitists shared similar ideological and artistic ideas in the period between the two world wars. Their joint actions against futurists in 1924-25 particularly stand out, i.e. against Marinetti who cheered the forthcoming fascism at the lectures in Paris, where Slavenski also stayed at the time as a scholarship holder. Through a collage assembled from Slavenski’s music and music interventions typical of that period, we will hear parts of the manifest, slogans, documents from the time of the First Avant-Garde flying through our programme… Words like THE BALKANS, MAN, COSMOS, ZENITH, HELIOS, HELIOPHONICS, CHAOS… and again – MAN.

Questions without full answers remain.

Why is Josip Slavenski sidelined, marginalised to such an extent today? Where does his music heritage reside today? Where are the originality and energetic charge of his creative opus? In which dimension is his uniqueness kept? Where has his former international reputation of a protected author of the famous German publishing house Schott, suddenly interrupted by the rise of fascism in Germany, been lost? Can we still see the glow of this Yugoslav composer’s aura, which disappeared during “our” wars in the nineties, when the question “WHO DOES SLAVENSKI BELONG TO?” was once again brought to the fore?

Ana Kotevska graduated from the Faculty of Philology, Comparative Literature Department, and from the Faculty of Music, Department of Musicology, in Belgrade. As the holder of the scholarship awarded by the French Government, she developed her potentials in Paris where she defended her thesis at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University, Esthetics Department, under the mentorship of Vladimir Jankelević. After she had worked as a music critic, editor and radiophonic artist on Radio Belgrade 2 and Radio Belgrade 3 until 1994, Ana was forced to take a compulsory leave for political reasons, after which she worked as the Director of the SOKOJ Music Information Centre and publisher of the “New Sound” international journal of music, whose editorial board member she has been since its foundation. In late 2012, she was appointed the President of the Serbian Musicological Society.

Since her university years, Ana has continuously published works in the field of music criticism and essays in various printed and audiovisual media, still dedicating her attention to musicological works, mostly dedicated to French music from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, opus of contemporary composers and music of West Africa. She was the selector of the “Theatre City” music program in Budva and the International Review of Composers in Belgrade. She wrote the book “Clippings from the Last Century/ Music Criticism and (Non-)Critical Thinking 1992-1996 (Clio, 2017) and co-authored the book of radio interviews “ConTact” (Čigoja, Belgrade, 1998).

Ana Kotevska received the only accolade awarded at the International Competition for Young Music Critics in Paris in 1974 and multiple recognitions for her radiophonic opus.

She is the member of the Composers’ Association of Serbia, Serbian Musicological Society, European Movement in Serbia, Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (NUNS) and Association of Francophone Journalists of Serbia.